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A poet’s war in the mud of the First World War in Europe. After the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Irishman Patrick MacGill enlisted in a territorial army unit the 2nd London Irish Battalion as a rifleman. His claim at the time was that he and its colonel were the only true Irishmen serving in it. MacGill, already a well regarded author and poet, would record his experiences from training to his unit’s embarkation to France and then onwards to his early experiences of trench warfare and finally to the time of the great attacks which included the battle of Loos and in which he was seriously wounded. During the course of the war-which he survived-MacGill wrote several books on the subject, but three-The Amateur Army, The Red Horizon and The Great Push, directly concern his time with the London Irish and it is these books that have here been combined-in their entirety-by the Leonaur Editors to create this single comprehensive volume of his life as an ordinary rifleman in the front line. MacGill employs his talent to great effect in this volume so the reader is not only taken into the heart of the war through his sensitivity to the description of events, emotions, sights and details but also because of his ability to convey realistic dialogue that portrays the various types of the army in the trenches authentically and often with great affection and humour.
